Hey Jissa, would this not be possible using the period category in factors? Then you can mark each day you’re on your period as a factor?

No because it’s not tracking exactly which day of my cycle I’m currently on. I would want the current cycle day to be easily visible and update every day automatically until I mark the start of a new cycle, and then it resets to 1. Our menstrual cycles are not just when we’re on our period and it’s VERY helpful to keep track of it. For example, if I’m having lots of PMS symptoms, I can look at the current cycle day, and if it’s about a week before my next period is due, then I can confirm that they are PMS symptoms. Doctors often ask us when our last period was, too, so if I know which cycle day I’m on, I can tell them exactly when my last period started. Right now I’m forced to use another app to keep track of it, which is not ideal. I would recommend looking at apps that track the menstrual cycle for a good example of what we would need. Thank you for asking!

Copied from another similar ticket:

Elizabeth: “A simple day count of menstruatal cycle. The user marks day of menstruation start and the counter counts up from there 1 day at a time until the user presses the first day of menstruation button again. This can then be used analytically to see patterns of symptoms that occur at certain days in the cycle and to track cycle length. It’s one way to integrate cycle patterns anyway.”

Yes, that’s exactly what I would want too!

A while ago i found dietery advise during your cycle. According to that the advise changes at certain for certain ‘stages’ during the cycle. It might be helpfull to be able to add these stages. Maybe with a colour, saying day one through 5 is red and then day from day 22 till end is orange. And for ease maybe show the number of the day in the colour in the lower left corner of where the date is. That way you can easely see where you are in the counter.

I would love to have the feature to count cycle days, but it would be great if we were able to turn it on and off at will.

A lot of women go from having regular cycles to not having them for a variety of reasons: health issues, birth control use, pregnancy and breastfeeding… Many period tracking apps count these situations as cycles that are months or even years long. This is obviously ridiculous and often it messes up health data.

I think it would really set Bearable apart from other apps if it had a button/switch that said “Start/stop counting cycle days from this date”. So if someone went on certain forms of hormonal birth control or they got pregnant, they could switch cycle day counting off, and switch it back on when they started having a natural cycle again.

I need this feature also. I have the exact same problem with PMS symtoms thar occur during certain times of the cycle. So it would be awesome to be able too see what day in the cycle I am currently on.

Could this also be something that could pull data from Apple Health? Since I use another app to track my cycle and it syncs into Health, it would be awesome if Bareable could pull that data from Health so I don’t have to log it twice.

This would be amazing if it was more flexible than just periods (though I’d love it for periods too!) Say if we could name the thing that recurs and counts up. Example: I get B12 shots and it’d be great to see if my symptoms change as a function of time since injection. It’d be useful for any periodic treatment, some off the top of my head would be venesections, hormone therapy, Botox for migraines, I’m sure there are more!

This is a great idea! I wanted to suggest changes to the medication section so that it can remind us to take a certain medicine or have a certain procedure every X days/weeks/months.

But your idea is better, it would allow the user to see at a glance when their last treatment was and how it’s affecting mood and symptoms.

Yeah, that flexibility would be great! I am also doing lichttherapie for winter depression. Also being able to turn it off would then be and getting a reminder when i might start again would be amazing! With a counter i would be able to recognize how long the effects last. And being able to enter a dosage, in this case how many weeks did I do the therapy, then i can see what has the longest effect, and even when does it start taking effect.

I would also like to be able to keep travk when I skip a period (with birth control pills) and that it shows me which days I would have likely had my period, that way I could see if skipping has as much of an effect on my symptoms as having my period

Tracking any cycles is great and would be super helpful. I’d use it to track both my menstrual cycle and treatment cycles I need for something else. Wouldn’t want it automatically calculating though as those cycles aren’t always perfectly fixed.

I’d also like to be able to checkbox if I took my birth control that day, if I forgot it, or if I am taking multiples because I forgot earlier doses. Seeing the effect on symptoms/mood of forgetting+taking a double dose would be great

I’d love to see you add cycle tracking functionality! If you have women working on your team or can have a woman consult you in the implementation, that would be phenomenal.

Any automation is welcome when one experiences regular bouts of fatigue 😂 and then being to fine-tune/tweak the data would be an ideal functionality

I agree, I often find that where I am in my cycle affects my symptoms and would love to see the correlation in bearable, either by adding cycle tracking to the app or by adding the ability to sync with womanlog which I currently use for cycle tracking.

Yes! I came to Bearable due to needing to track the less “normal” symptoms that occur during my cycle. I would love to see a section that is a period tracker just like Clue, with a calendar.

100% need this too. Currently it is the only thing that still means I am using two apps: this and Clue / Flo. Effective cycle tracking and predictions are complex so perhaps in the short term it could be better to partner with other apps like Clue, or Flo, to pull the data in from there (or even via the apple health app which syncs with these apps already)

100% need this too, I’ve been looking for an app to do this, as I have a chronic illness that changes in severity throughout my cycle. I’d like to be able to spot patterns better.

I’d just like to add, for me when looking at the calendar, I’d like to be able to see when my period started when looking at all factors - maybe a red circle or dot. I can easily count cycle day when looking at this then & spot patterns throughout my cycle. Also for insights, I’d like to be able to view by menstrual cycle, or custom period. Anag again, have the ability to see a little red dot to mark where my cycle started.

At the moment I’m taking Bearable screenshots & looking back over my Clue app data & annotating the Bearable screenshots with where my period started, ovulation, cycle day etc. Which is a bit clunky.

If you need book recommendations for inspiration on how cycles affect women’s health throughout the month, I’d recommend Maisie Hill’s Period Power.

You have created an amazing app by the way, thank you so much. First time I ever subscribed to an app and its 100% worth it.

I need this too. If it could pull in data from fitbit, that would be even better!

Thanks for your comment

Can you give a bit more detail on how this would differ from setting the “on period” when you are on your menstrual cycle and then going to the calendar or graph page and highlighting all days with “on period” by pressing “select factor”?

Also you can correlate with mood, symptoms and sleep in the factor effect sections of the advanced insights pages.

Thanks

I mean setting “on period” in the current Factors section in the “Period” category.

Oh that’s really helpful, thank you! I’m sorry I didn’t realise I could do that, still learning my way around the app!

Also is there any chance in the future of being able to customise insights time period to a custom period like a menstrual cycle instead of just 30 days/60 days /year?

Love this app so much, thank you!

Hey bearable!

I suggest looking at the app Flo to get inspiration on what would be needed.

For exanple: Countable days before period, types of period, ovulation time, link to body temperature

This is a lovely idea! And the only thing left for me to have in bearable before i can completely be sold on this.

i need it.Menstruation affects like a manic depression my condition＋performance.

A separate section for the menstruation cycle would be amazing. The factors really only help you see how being on your period can affect your mood and other symptoms, but it lacks the depth to be able to track it itself. Time stamps for swapping sanitary items would be helpful for people who are experiencing heavy flow Predicting future periods based on a few months of data Tracking flow, ovulation, etc

This would be great and stop needing multiple apps! Tracking days of period would be a great addition! I have another app just for this which is silly really

Why is this only under consideration?!

this would be an extremely useful feature and something i haven’t been able to get from another app. currently still using paper to track cycles for that reason.

the ability to switch on and off (and also to list the reason why!) would be very very helpful. as an example, i just started nexplanon (the arm implant birth control) and that’s probably going to change my cycle dramatically. i don’t like inputting this information in other apps because they use predictive cycle tracking (which is very useful to be able to predict the start of the next cycle) but it messes up statistics when on birth control and then when you go off of birth control and your cycle returns to normal it takes forever for it to even back out because the app is using the data from being on birth control as “normal” statistics for you. and then they get the predictions wrong.

this would be a great feature to add!

Yes! This would be awesome! Others have already said it, look at apps like Flo for reference for counting days. Menstrual cycles are insanely complex, and for some can affect nearly every aspect of their daily lives. (Some can be basically crippled and bedridden by their period for example.) The symptoms in the app as they are are helpful, but only great if you already know what your cycle does to you physically or mentally. Logging when you are on your period, and then automatically counting the days after would be awesome to keep in one place, and easier to correlate symptoms to the point in the cycle. That way we can figure out if it’s our hormones affecting us, or something else. Also, being able to toggle with a reason sounds great for folks on birth control and whatnot!

Another reason that would be awesome is that this app isnt designed to be overly feminine like many period trackers - that would be super inclusive for LGBTQ+ folks that get their period but don’t identify as female. AND it would be really discreet since it’s bundled in with the other health stuff bearable has.

It’s really helpful to be able to note daily flow levels (spotting, light, medium, heavy) characteristics (clots, color).

It’s such a critical part of half the populations health and is so important to track it’s effect on other symptoms and conditions.

This is such a wonderful easy to use and thoughtful app. It’d be a shame to dismiss women’s needs in something that works so hard to help people understand and organize their health. Developers, please consult women and listen to their needs.

This is something we really want to do. However it’s important to consider that there are many very good apps out there that ONLY focus on menstrual tracking, and receive millions of dollars in investment just to do that. This is not an easy thing for a very small company like us (with no outside investment) to do as well as these huge businesses (like Clue, Flo etc). It’s important to be realistic in the near term what we can achieve that would still be useful.

Maybe we can start with some basic functionality - if someone has any ideas that would be a good place to start that would still be useful, then please let me know. As for something like a complex algorithm to predict cycles, this is not something we have the resources for.

What if to start with we simply separated menstrual tracking out of the current Factor Category, and into its own separate homepage section? So you could mark when you were on your period and add factors like “Spotting” etc. and maybe also period-specific symptoms. Then we could slowly but surely build on this feature. Let me know what you think of this.

Also feel free to come forward with some other simple solutions that we could start with.

Thanks!

It would be helpful to have the day of the cycle show in a way that we can see how it corresponds with other factors such as sleep, fatigue, pain, headaches, mood etc. I’m not sure if it’s clear to you James, but a menstrual cycle is the whole month (approx) not just the period part. There are hormones that ebb and flow (excuse the pun!) throughout the whole month, affecting things such as our temperature, pain levels, weight, mood, appetite, fertility etc. As a minimum, a useful thing would be to be able to track (and I get your point about not being able to predict) cycles, by marking a day as menstruating or ovulating. It would also be a handy option to track cervical mucus, which is important for fertility. This would help make Bearable much more useful for menstruating people. I also second the suggestion that medication reminders can be set for longer gaps, eg once a fortnight.

I’m not a programmer, so I’m not sure how complicated this would be, but maybe there is a way the user could input info (how long their cycle is, and when it starts) so that the app could show which day of the cycle they’re on. That way, it would at least be easier to see which symptoms correspond to which days in their cycle. For women who track their cycle using another app, or who have a regular cycle, maybe this could simplify things?

Yes, having an indication of when cycle day 1 starts, then counting the cycle days from there until the start of the next cycle. It would really be helpful to see symptoms and how they correspond to each day of the cycle.

Hi James! I do believe people are asking for a LOT ever since I started this thread about tracking menstruations. I personally think the basic functions we truly need is just a way to show the current day of cycle in a prominent place on the entry page every day (maybe a new collapsible section that always shows the current day of cycle even when collapsed), a way to “reset” the cycle to day 1 when our period starts (to keep the current day of cycle accurate), and a way to easily track it in Insights. That’s personally all I’m looking for and would be the basic necessity. Hope it helps, and thank you so much for you hard work!

Forgot to add that within that section, we could then input our own trackable symptoms such as flow, pain, etc.

Hi James - I agree with Jissa, - for me a way to see my cycle day easily, track what day I’m on & reset to 1 when I have my period, and to be able to see these things in insights. I love the idea of it in its own section too. Maybe the ability to add factors in the section too? As an example, I am currently using the factors ‘week 1/2/3/4’ (which works for me as I have a regular cycle, everyone will be different) & although it’s a crude method, just analysing by weeks, I’ve already noticed correlations using insights of which weeks of my cycle are better/worse for lots of symptoms related to my chronic illness. This has been so useful for me. With factors, as well as symptoms, we could each add our own information we’d like to follow and track.

An example of how cycle can influence health or mood at any time of the month, not just before or during periods, is that I discovered by manually analysing my mood data myself on a previous app that I used to use for years (daylio) that I have some symptoms flare up every month around day 10 (sometimes day 9,11 or 12). This was incredibly useful for me to find this out, but took several years to find out. So being able to see any insights correlating with certain days of the cycle would be amazing and I imagine would help find things out much quicker.

As for predicting cycle length - to be honest that’s not something I would ever expect from Bearable. I am more than happy to mark my period once a month in Clue & just have it predict my cycle. For me, Bearable is about spotting correlations & keeping records of my health, including correlations with menstruation. Prediction is not something I’d ever expect from it.

I agree 100%. I use Fitbit for my period tracker. I really just want to be able to see my current cycle day.

As Jennifer mentions - would this not all be much simpler if we just only allowed people to import their cycle into the app? Maybe Clue or Flow have an API (as I don’t think Google Fit has that functionality like Apple Health Kit, meaning Android users would otherwise have nothing). The problem is if people do actually want to enter it manually into Bearable and don’t want to use another Period app to enter everything.

I guess the ultimate would be creating a menstrual tracking section where people could have the option of importing OR tracking manually, although this would be quite complex.

Can someone explain to me what they mean by “resetting my cycle”? I want to understand the logistics a bit more, as a realise your cycle isn’t ALWAYS the same, so it’s a problem if it’s just assuming you’re on your period at a certain time without you being able to say otherwise.

Resetting the cycle means going back to day 1. Day 1 is the day menstruation starts. The essential thing here is having a counter you can see in the graphs, that a user can set back to day 1 as needed.

And it would also be helpful to be able to see the cycle day on the homescreen, obviously, whether in a separate section of not. For me those would be the essential cycle features. A bonus would be if the user could tag certain days with certain labels. For example, I know that my period usually lasts 4 days. So I would like the ability to tag days 1 through 4 and menstruating so as not to have to add in that information every day. This could also be helpful for witches and werewolves who track moon phases. (Just trying to lighten the mood). Thank you for trying to understand!

As Sarah has said above, a cycle starts on the day you begin menstruating, this is day 1. The days continue counting on & on until the day your next period begins, and then the cycle day “resets” to again, marking the official beginning of a new cycle. I hope I’m making sense!

As for importing from another app, I’m not a developer, so I don’t know what is possible and not possible & what is too complex. Personally I only use Clue for marking the first day of each new cycle so I can keep track of them, and it can also predict my next cycle quite well. I don’t use it for logging anything else with my cycle, as its too hard to remember to use it as well as Bearable - once a month is enough for me. But even if it was just to import my cycle day from clue, this would still be great. I could still continue customise factors & symptoms as they are, to track other things. The great thing about Bearable is its so customisable for the user. So even just having cycle day recorded/imported at the would be great.

Thanks for putting so much thought into this. It’s really appreciated.

*1st paragraph above should say “‘resets’ to 1 again” - sorry

Yes, I use my cycle tracking app, Womanlog, exactly the same way you do, maybe once or twice a month. I prefer to log symptoms using bearable. Sometimes I’ll check it when I get a headache because I know that corresponds to certain days in my cycle, which is why it would be so helpful to have that info right there in the bearable app!

I use fitbit to track my cycle. If there was a way to pull that in to bearable with an api, that would be great! Or as everyone else mentioned, I wouldn’t mind entering the start of my cycle into Bearable. Seeing my cycle day in relation to my bearable info would be super helpful!

Hi James! I’ve talked to my husband, who is also a programmer, to try to understand how to explain this better. He was also very confused 😂

One thing that is important to understand is that most women do not have a perfect cycle. One month, it’ll be 30 days, the next might be 28 days… we never know. So we don’t want your app to tell us WHEN we’ll be on our period, we just want to be able to keep track of what current day in our cycle we are in.

We only need you to give us an option to set day 1 of our cycle every month, and then offset that date from then on for every subsequent day forward. When our period start, we will then manually “reset” this date, which means we will indicate the new “Day 1” for the cycle.

Basically, even if our cycle isn’t always perfect, knowing that we are around the middle, or towards the end of our cycle is helpful to correlate symptoms. Which is why we want it to be prominent on the page (like on the banner of a category) so that we can see it at first glance whenever we want.

So if my period started today, I would like to click on the feature, select 5/13/2021 as day 1 of this current cycle, and then tomorrow, it should say “Day 2” without any input from me.

And just in case this helps, I’ve asked my husband to explain what he understood from our conversation 😅:

“Hello James, apparently only a tiny fraction of women actually have a consistent number of days in their cycle. That is to say their cycle occurs every N days. I was asking my wife what the “default cycle length” should be, and she said there isn’t one for most women. What she’s asking for is an ability to set a day 1 at some calendar day in the app, and have the app display on the main screen Day N as counted from when day 1 was set. And this number just keeps counting up until she chooses to “set day 1” again. If that Day 1 is on the day she’s opened the app she just has one button “set day 1 as today”, if she is opening the app a few days after that she wants to be able to set day 1 to some arbitrary date in the past. If no action is taken by the user, then the app should just count up and display “day N” for all time. So it is possible for the app to display something that does not meet reality such as you are in “day 6,358” of the cycle if the user has not reset to day 1 again. Since this seems a bit confusing, I would suggest some kind of configurable global max “X days” with a default length of say 45 days (or whatever appropriate number) and display something like “more than X days since cycle began” if that number is exceeded without any user interaction for that many days.”

I hopes that helps and doesn’t confuse you further!

Take a look at what Hormone Horoscope was trying to do on Android/google play. Sadly that app was abandoned but they were doing something right - counting cycle days and being able to add notes based on what day of the cycle i was. It’s good for us to identify the patterns like on day 3 i always have a similar craving etc.

day 1 of the cycle is the day you start menstruating. the cycle resets every month when you get your period. so most cycles are typically 25-30 days long, but each month can vary a little bit from person to person, and especially for people on birth control. it would be really cool to have a feature that counts the days for you.

most of these apps automatically track this cycle for you based on when you state that you started menstruating. so if i mark medium flow on may 5th (and i haven’t marked any flow prior to that,) the app will mark that as day 1 of the cycle and start counting from there. if my cycle ends may 8th then, the app recognizes that i stopped logging a flow but will keep counting, until i mark another date in the future as a menstruating day, and then the app marks that date as day 1 again, and it starts all over.

a lot of the ‘prediction’ ability of these apps is really just taking the average length of your cycle (over the past 6-ish months) and guessing that in roughly 26 or 28 days your new cycle will start over again, because that’s typically the number of days between cycles in the past.

here’s some data that might help as well

may 5 - day 1 (start of cycle, menstruation begins) may 6 - day 2 may 7 - day 3 this counting continues on each day may 30 - day 26 may 31 - day 1 (new cycle starts/resets, menstruation begins)

each time menstruation begins, the cycle restarts, and it doesn’t always line up with the beginning of the month, so knowing what day of the cycle we’re on is important. it can also help us recognize if abdominal pain is tied to ovulation or if it might be a cyst or something else. without knowing the approximate day of the cycle, this is hard to know.

importing from another app would also be a perfectly fine option. a lot of apps also sync with apple health, etc. and i have the information in apple health, so even syncing this with apple health would be fine. just some way to view this in bearable so we can use it in conjunction with the insights and how we log our symptoms would be a really helpful feature.

I would also really love this feature! Mostly just the ability to track what day of the cycle I’m on, my flow and symptoms (which it already does), and make correlations with other things that I’m tracking.

For example, correlating diet with cycle length or symptoms (such as my cycle is longer if I eat dairy often that month, or my flow is heavier on day 1 if I have caffeine the week before); correlating energy levels with the cycle day (such as energy levels average lower on days 14-18 of the cycle) so I can know what part of the month not to take on extra commitments at work or plan a hard workout; correlating supplements with cycle length (such as cycles when I take a B Complex and a Magnesium regularly have a more consistent cycle length), etc.

The correlations are the big thing I’ve found missing from every period tracker app I’ve tried, and I’d love for it to be what sets Bearable apart.

It would also be great to get ovulation predictions and cycle start predictions, but I understand that might be outside the scope for now. Most period tracker apps will ask how long your average cycle length is and then use your data over time to refine its predictions. Sometimes it’s off by a few days but I expect that, and just the general heads up of “hey your period is starting soon” is really helpful when I’m busy and keeps it from sneaking up on me with a surprise.

Thanks for all the input, this will make it a lot easier for me when it comes to designing this.

Do you have some apps I can look at where you can easily change your “day 1”. I want to see how that user flow looks. Thanks!

Also, sorry if this has been answered but what if you set your day 1 and then forget to use the app for a month. Do you have to then go back and change all previous entries if your cycle didn’t align with that initial entry?

Also, sorry if this has been answered but what if you set your day 1 and then forget to use the app for a month. Do you have to then go back and change all previous entries if your cycle didn’t align with that initial entry?

No. If you set ‘day 1’ and then forget to use the app, the next time you use it you could just log when your last period started, which would be the most recent ‘day 1’ - i think the idea here would be that we don’t log ahead of time, so whenever that time for ‘day 1’ comes around, we’ll reset it on that day. it would be really easy if this were just a button we could click to reset the counter. i don’t know of any apps that do this because most of the time the counting is automatic - they start counting for you based on the first date you mark period flow.

In Garmin connect app, there is an option to set your period in calendar to day 1. While it has prediction option (not sure what it based on really, maybe an average cycle length), but I always set the day 1 myself. It asks on predicted day if it’s started or not, but a user can also go to the period section and in the calendar set that day manually. It then counts days and shows the cycle day number on the main screen in the app - that’s what basically most of us want here, to see where we at in the cycle and how it affects us. Garmin also shows the cycle phases (Menstruation, Folicular, Ovulation, Lutean.) This can be either calculated and be shown with the cycle day number, or be set as factors by users if we have a separate section for period which would be awesome.

I thought about something right after I posted a previous comment. The app already has a calendar built in, and it could be implemented right there to set the first day in case we need to go back and change something (forget to set it, or didn’t use the app for a while). Not sure if it’s possible to implement, but then the whole cycle (period and non period days) can be shown on the calendar with other factors!

Hi James, a selection of apps I’ve used that you could try are Clue, Ovuview & as Kay mentioned above, Garmin Connect. I know there are lots of others too. Those are just the ones I use. With most of them, once you press period flow/menses/bleeding (whatever its called in the app), it automatically sets your cycle back to day one (but allows you to add a number of subsequent bleeding days without it reseting to day 1 again, if that makes sense). Probably will make more sense having a look at the apps than my explanation! I literally just use it once a month to press the button for starting my period & then forget about it, apart from checking my cycle day. You can also easily go back through the calendar dates in all the apps & add previous periods in the same way as a current one.

Just here to add my voice. This shouldn’t just be “under consideration”. Menstruation is a pretty major thing to “bear”. Have a look period apps like clue for inspiration. 2 apps to track is annoying. Currently marking first day as a life event but not quite right functionality

I use “mon calendrier”, it has reminders when you re going to have ovulation or menstruation and automatically set up your next periods by analyzing your past datas. Very Nice !

Ptracker is a very robust app, even the free version. It tracks your cycles and over time learns and adjusts accordingly. You still have to start the counter with the button but can change it (and even add whole periods) if you forget, but it is fairly accurate in prediction (even ovulation!). I believe the period ‘on’ times out 14 days after your cycle starts but you can stop it earlier or continue it if necessary. I get reminders if I didn’t hit the start button and it’s expecting, so that helps. One time I forgot to use it for about 6 months and I was able to say if it was because I forgot to use the app (so it takes it out of the algorithm/data) or if that I actually didn’t have a period (so it is included in data). Everything can be changed after the fact so if your period is longer or shorter or off by a week, you can document accordingly. It even allows for data to be pulled comparing cycle lengths over the course of months and years! It’s a really fab app but something similar within Bearable would be ideal for tracking symptoms relating to or exacerbated by menstruation! Sometimes our menstruation cycle is a symptom of a larger situation (like endometriosis or PCOS) so being able to track how the rest of our body feels against our cycles will help in the diagnosis of these often-missed conditions! Hope this helps in the design - excited to see the feature implemented!

I know this is under consideration, but I wanted to give some input into how I find this useful.

I track my cycle into first half, (follicular) and second half (luteal) phase, as well as the days im bleeding, and the five days before I bleed.

Currently, I track all these are factors, but the problem with this is my cycle varies in length, so when I get my period, I have to manually go back and edit the last five days, and the days where it would switch to first and last.

I understand that this feels like a lot of work, but it’s relevant to 50% of your users, and has a huge impact on health outcomes.

The features I think would be most necessary are : a toggle for menstruating or not : being able to compare symptoms to menstruation on the calender : factor effect on symptoms by menstruating, follicular or luteal phase : tagging for if you use hormonal birth control or not

Thanks for your consideration, as others have said, lots of great articles out there helping explain why this is necessary 😊

“The features I think would be most necessary are : a toggle for menstruating or not : being able to compare symptoms to menstruation on the calender : factor effect on symptoms by menstruating, follicular or luteal phase : tagging for if you use hormonal birth control or not”

I don’t understand how this is different to what we already have? Or do you mean you just don’t want to have to tag it manually, but instead leave a toggle on?

Also, if your cycle changes anyway, wouldn’t you manually have to go back and edit it even if we had this toggle?

Would love for this to sync with Clue

I’m also using Factors to track where I am in my cycle each day, but because the set of factors (menstruating, follicular, ovulating, luteal) isn’t mutually exclusive or treated as a special category, it makes data interpretation kind of hard. The detail level and time periods of the reports also make it hard to look for trends that occur monthly.

I use Clue and Fitbit to track my cycle too and would be happy to import from either.

This feature request seems so complicated that I wonder if a focus group or survey would be useful to help define it better? Engaging a UX research firm (with leaders who menstruate!) would be awesome, but if you don’t have the budget or connections, I might be able to help for a discounted rate (I’m a project manager with experience in UX research and web dev).

I would also like the app to have a prediction feature. I know that about a week before my period starts I have a mood drop, it would be great if Bearable could send a push notification a week before my period is predicted to start and the anticipated day 1 of my period.

I had the same thought. I track mine in MyHealth and would like it to sync with Bearable. I’d like to be able to see insights surrounding my cycle- mood, pain, etc. I have had terrible PMDD and just started a med for it and would like to see how that affects my mood now.

Have you checked out other period and fertility trackers? They would help provide some insight for you. The problems people are encountering come from the way the data is collected in Bearable and how to then use that data to create meaningful insights. I currently use 2 different period tracking apps, but neither has all the features I would like.

Yes!!! Perfectly said! And now I’m going to get this app you mentioned.

I’d love to be able to import data from Clue. Like you said, these apps are intended to be robust solutions to track and predict our cycles and you can’t compete with that, which I can appreciate… being able to pull in some of that data would be hugely helpful to get better insights and have less manual inputting to do.

There are already great apps for this, like clue, maybe an integration with one of those apps would be a good thing? I have been using clue for a long time and they do research and can predict my cycle and symptoms.

Lol I hadn’t even seen clue was already mentioned

Similar to this, I love that you can see the after-effect of factors, but for PMS you don’t know it’s about to happen…. So it would be really cool to see “previous 7 days effect” or something like that.

This would mean the difference between having to use multiple apps and the ability to track everything in Bearable. I, too, need to track how different parts of my cycle affect other health conditions and I’d really like to be able to track things like volume of fluid lost in order to graph what exactly a “heavy” day looks like compared to a “medium” day in terms of ML

+1 to the comment that the cycle affects the whole month and not just the days you’re bleeding. I think it would be easiest and best to integrate with existing apps.

I use Readmybody to track and predict my cycle. I track cervical fluid, basal body temperature (using tempdrop) and menstruation, and sometimes take ovulation tests. Some women will need pregnancy test results and hormone test results. It’s really complex but important.

To note: there is no standard cycle length, or ovulation date. These need to be tracked using symptoms. People who are pregnant will have one long ‘cycle’ after ovulation. People coming off the pill or with conditions such as pcos may go months without bleeding or ovulating, or their bodies may try to ovulate several times with the symptoms that go with that.

The impact my cycle personally has on me: - ADHD symptoms way worse post-ovulation, and gradually worsening until my period comes. -Horrible sudden dip in mood as I ovulate. Usually fine a day later. - Nausea and vomiting worse in week before period. -Weight higher in 2 weeks before period. -stomach cramps and constipation around ovulation. -If I don’t ovulate properly, I get acne and feel awful.
-I’m underweight due to my condition so need to pay attention to whether I’m ovulating and as it’s an indicator that my health is getting worse if I don’t/ the first or second half of my cycle is getting a lot longer or shorter than normal.Unusually late or early periods can also indicate stress/travelling/sleep cycle impacting the body, so useful to note.

So most important to me is being able to input ‘day 1’ and for that to roll from my period until it comes around again. Days post suspected ovulation is also important. But I need a lot of data and some help guess that, so best to pull from existing app.

Basically knowing where I am in my cycle can help me to know whether constipation, nausea, low mood, being chaotic, generalised pain, bloating, weight increase/loss are significant and in need of further investigation, or just part of my normal cycle. Likewise tracking many fertility symptoms shows me if all is working as it should, or if there’s a problem with my cycle.

As it’s hugely complex but also hugely important, I vote for integrating with external apps (but giving option just to set ‘day 1’ and maybe ‘peak day and/or temp change’ for those less actively tracking. Setting ‘day 1’ is probably bare minimum utility).

I think a good start would be integrating Cycle or Flo or other menstrual tracking app data into Bearable, and then developing more functionality later. I’m on a medication that IS affected by my period and due to this, I tend to track better and more consistently in my period tracking app than Bearable, but if it linked to Bearable, I’d be more likely to use Bearable too.

Would be even easier if it pulled the period data from Garmin directly:)

If bearable could figure out what phase of menstrual cycle you are on from oura ring data that would be great. Oura ring temperature data can be used to figure out when ovulation is & what day the period starts.

From oura ring temperature data I was able to figure out that I typically feel worse from 1 week before ovulation up until the point of ovulation. If bearable could automatically generate insights such as these, that would be fantastic.

Also, predicting future symptoms that are periodic would be super useful. I noticed some of my main symptoms are highly periodic and built a simple spreadsheet to predict how I will feel on future days. Having this helps me plan future events for days I will feel relatively good and anticipate bad days accordingly.

I’m glad to see that the community is engaging so much, but I’m really surprised that this isn’t the number one priority for your devs. Cycle tracking is sort of a non negotiable if you want this app to have a devoted female userbase. If you open sourced the app I’d work on it myself! But it’s just sad to me that a core part of women’s health is so far on the back burner, I would bet money that this is an all male dev team.

Agreed. Part of the issue may be that some users are asking for too much, and everyone wants their other apps to be compatible, but if we could at least start with a very basic cycle tracker that tells you the current date of your cycle, it would make a world of a difference. I’m disappointed that it still hasn’t happened and I still have to add it to my notes at the very bottom, and then go back every day to remember which cycle day today is… I suggested this over a year ago now.

Agreed! Would be great if they would create a roadmap or something to implement this feature. Indeed Jissa, starting with the basics of cycle day and then build it out.

Yes I’d love to see period integration, including all aspects of the cycle such as basal body temperature, ovulation symptoms, etc. This really us a core part of any user’s health who has a menstrual cycle of any type i.e half your user base!

Totally agree with integration with Apple health on this one!

I agree this is an essential feature- to be able to track your cycle. My request is to also not have bleeding listed as a “symptom”. Bleeding is healthy, normal, and expected.

Language is powerful; and categorizing bleeding as a “symptom” perpetuates the false narrative that bleeding is a problem to be dealt with, is undesirable, is “gross”, etc. When in fact, it is healthy and vital to a woman’s fertility, and in my opinion something to be honored and celebrated!

Instead would it be possible to sync with Flo app? It’s clinical insights and functionality are second to none. Perhaps a partnership or agreement that allows sync from Flo to Bearable could work well?

Instead would it be possible to sync with Flo app? It’s clinical insights and functionality are second to none. Perhaps a partnership or agreement that allows sync from Flo to Bearable could work well?

Agreed, a cycle tracking feature (and updates to data privacy so it cannot be / is damned hard to subpoena) is incredibly important now more than ever for people with uteruses who live in the US and for their intimate partners. Syncing with dat a from apple health or from popular trackers like eve/glow, clue, FLO, MyFLO, Ovia, etc) would be a great first step!

I’m quite disappointed that this feature is still “under consideration” instead of “planned” or better “in progress”, it disregards the people with uteruses as users of this app. This feature is so highly requested across all platforms, I’m seriously befuddled this isn’t a higher priority.

If there isn’t significant progress on this in the near future I will be unsubscribing from the paid plan. I would encourage others to do the same.

Yeah. I’m the one who made this post, and I’ve unsubscribed and found another app that allows me to track my menstrual cycle. I paid for this for 2 years and it’s still completely ignored, even though it’s a HUGE component of our lives. Very disappointed, and I’m voting with my money on this one.

Which app did you switch to?

would love to know this too!

Just cancelled my paid plan, will only reconsider the premium if and when this feature is added.

I will also be unsubscribing and possibly uninstalling the app altogether if this doesnt become “in progress” soon. Its been 2 years, it seems like willful disregard at this point.

Yo any update on this feature? Frustrating not being able to consider where I am in my menstrual cycle.

This feature is absolutely essential for everyone with a menstrual cycle. I’d go as far as saying the app is useless without it if you’re looking to get accurate results. The effects of the menstrual cycle are just too widespread.

The moment that feature goes live I’m becoming a paying customer again (regardless of whether this feature is premium or not - though I want to stress that it shouldn’t be, because again, that’s basics for everyone with a menstrual cycle).

Since ADHD symptoms can fluctuate with the menstrual cycle i was hoping to use Bearable to measure this effect, I’m currently adding cycle day manually as an integer in custom health measurements but it’s extremely clunky. I’m really disappointed that this isnt part of bearable especially as for me my cycle day is right there in apple health, ready to be synced/imported!

It would also be helpful to connect to data input from Clue and/or Apple Health since they calculate predictive windows. I share my menstrual cycle data with my sister/partner so we can support each other through difficult periods (pun not intended!)

I would also like to see the ability to track post-hysterectomy cycle (women with no uterus but still have ovaries = menstrual cycle with no periods). It’s easy to know you have PMS when you are having periods; not so easy when you don’t! It would be useful to know what’s happening with hormones through perimenopause and know when menstrual cycles stop and you’ve reached menopause.

I’d love to just be able to add the day of my cycle, I don’t even ask that it tracks my cycle and predicts it. I would just like to see the correlation between my day 15 and my moods, etc etc

I’m so glad this is finally being moved to the planned phase. And I am so happy to see so many menstrators sharing their knowledge of our bodies. The lack of this feature is the reason I cancelled my plan and I would absolutely resubscribe as soon as any kind of support was added *with the knowledge that the feature would continue to be treated as a priority for further development.

I would love to have more regular updates for this feature (and others). The bearable team has such a great resource in the input from their users, some of whose are programmers or medical professionals or just regular old experts on our own bodies. But I would appreciate to know there is someone who menstruates getting paid to work on this feature. Not just relying on free labor and expertise of a historically marginalized group.

Thank you guys for all of your work. You really have something good going here

Integration with apple health’s menstrual cycle tracking would be great!

Really hope to see this soon!!

Right now I manually correlate and guess my phases. I miss all the functions of period tracking apps. I’d even consider partnering with one like stardust to integrate them

Agreed!

I’m so pleased this is coming. Such an important feature. I’d like to add that I think it would actually be helpful to have an OPTIONAL auto track feature.

Meaning if “track automatically” is turned on then every x days after “day 1” bearable will reset the count. However it absolutely MUST be possible to manually change an individual “day one” after bearable has auto entered it.

I totally get why many women have said it shouldn’t happen automatically BUT I do think the option should be there for 2 reasons:

1. What if we forget to click?

As someone with ADHD I know I won’t always remember to click “day one” . If I forget to do it too many times it could be very tedious to have to go back and manually enter each one. If there is a lot of cycles to go back through I probably won’t do it! This will really mess up the insights.

At least if it’s done automatically (even if not 100% accurate) my insights will still be useful.

To illustrate my point.

Say that Jane’s last 3 cycles were 28, 30 and 26 days long. She only remembered to click “day one” for the first cycle. Her data is obviously more useful if bearable has these entered as three 28 day cycles than if they are entered as 1 long 84 day cycle!

1. Past data!

This feature will be 1000x more useful if once available we can apply it to past data. Some people will have been using bearable a long time so doing this manually will be tedious at best.

If I enable “auto track” then go back to the very fist period I had since I starting using bearable (or the earliest that I know the start date of) and click “day one” I want it to automatically fill in every subsequent “day one”. I can then manually adjust as many individual day one’s as I choose to make it more accurate.

Wow this was long. Sorry and I do hope the way I’ve written this is easy to follow!

Damn, I mean “2. Past data” 🙃